ISIS a bunch of losers!

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Title says it all really:  https://uk.news.yahoo.com/isis-un-study-finds-foreign-164700852.html

Can somebody spare me a cluster-bomb? 

[StieliAlpha]

3 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Title says it all really:  https://uk.news.yahoo.com/isis-un-study-finds-foreign-164700852.html

Can somebody spare me a cluster-bomb? 

You think, a cluster bomb would help, where the MOAB had little effect?

I wish, life would be that simple.

Edited August 5, 2017 by StieliAlpha

[John Kettler]

Andy,

Pretty sad, really, but people in the named categories have ever been fodder for others' schemes and ambitions. If I were the western authorities, I'd be at pains to show what the Caliphate really looks like. Also, I find it oh so ironic that with the US military apparently having a gang problem because standards were dropped, at least for a time, some years ago, that ISIS should be afflicted thus!

Regards,

John Kettler

 

[IMHO]

@John Kettler, it'll take more than mere propaganda. Most of those who go have literally nothing to do at home and no future to expect. You can stop it only if you make them believe they have an alternative in normal life. May well be at a fraction of current military expenditures at Middle East... Broadly speaking current welfare programs at non-oil rich countries are simply designed to reproduce zealots. Allocating money to gasoline and floor subsidies yet keeping secular education unattainable for the poor (religious one is free and readily available). Just fashioned in a way underprivileged never stand a chance to ride up social lifts and pose economic competition to the "aristocracy".

[StieliAlpha]

6 hours ago, IMHO said:

 Just fashioned in a way underprivileged never stand a chance to ride up social lifts and pose economic competition to the "aristocracy".

Hmmmmm, reminds me to the raise of right wing movements and populists all over the place, Europe and "elsewhere".

But, seriously, I think the IS issue is far to complicated to be discussed here.

[Michael Emrys]

9 hours ago, IMHO said:

Most of those who go have literally nothing to do at home and no future to expect. You can stop it only if you make them believe they have an alternative in normal life. May well be at a fraction of current military expenditures at Middle East...

Hear, hear. Almost anything is cheaper than a military expedition at today's prices, especially one that is likely to be decisively victorious.

Michael

[IMHO]

3 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

anything is cheaper than a military expedition at today's prices, especially one that is likely to be decisively victorious.

Especially if one defines the victory as not a dismantling of state-like structures but rather as no acts of terror on the invading countries - be those Eastern or Western... It sets a higher mark - pushing everything under the rug is no more than a temporary solution.

6 hours ago, StieliAlpha said:

raise of right wing movements and populists all over the place, Europe and "elsewhere"

1. May be there's a similarity in popular feelings...
2. I guess in terms of real politik the situations are incomparable. Whereas in case of US/European politics it's still about the normal process of one political force taking over from another, in case of Middle East - there's nothing normal about the consequences. The costs are already borne whether those be in blood or gold. And the question is rather how to minimize the bloody side...

Edited August 8, 2017 by IMHO

[StieliAlpha]

23 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

Hear, hear. Almost anything is cheaper than a military expedition at today's prices, especially one that is likely to be decisively victorious.

Michael

Not quite sure, if I understand right: You mean "nothing" or "everything".

I guess you will get a Ryan Air flight from Brussels to Turkey for something like USD 100,-. Even if you add some for inland travel, that sounds affordable for any maniac.

[Machor]

Excellent new BBC piece on ISIS's grooming and brainwashing of children:

"An education in terror"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/an_education_in_terror

"His days with the caliphate were coming to an end. The final straw was when an IS fighter from Algeria picked him up, accusing him of smoking. It was late at night, and the fighter forced Omar into the back of a car to rape him.

...

But perhaps, the most Machiavellian of the Islamic State’s subversions can be seen in its teaching of the Koran. IS instructs its teachers to link verses to the non-mainstream jihadi concepts being taught in its classes, in many cases even providing them with page numbers and exact references. “Prepare for teaching this verse by teaching your students that a believer’s aim of jihad for the sake of Allah is either victory over the Kuffar (infidels) or death for the sake of Allah,” one instruction says.

By the time their primary studies are over, it is possible that this systematic practice made children correlate, maybe even confuse, between the doctrine and the Koran, the universal Holy Book of all Muslims. As a result, children would have seen any other Muslim not following the same doctrine as an apostate.

...

Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but at least 2,000 children became Lion Cubs of the Caliphate - child soldiers for the IS war machine, and many thousands more were manipulated and turned towards jihad in IS classrooms.

They are victims, and some are a threat. Almost all are left at the very edges of whatever society they now inhabit.

And there is a danger of them re-offending, says Dr Mia Bloom. “It’s not the recidivism one would expect. These kids can be funnelled into criminality, they have all the skills for it. They end up in criminal gangs, not terrorist groups.""